Sorry If You Can't Unsee That
Wow, I guess having a tickly cough (brought on by incessant talking to claimants on the phone) is not the best of experiences whilst reading the first 6 or 7 chapters of "The Stand", where the 'superflu' kills off 99.4% of Hom. Sap. Hopefully I'll survive until tomorrow.
ANYWAY - actually that maths plays into the rest of this Intro, because I was looking at the influence of Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend" on consequent films, and perhaps novels, too. Except novels are harder to track as there's so many of them. Art!
Vintage of 1954. There is an Italian studio production starring Vincent Price, which broadly follows the novel, even if the use of Fiat trucks is a bit jarring and breaks the willing suspension of disbelief, since it was filmed in Rome, not South Canada. Perhaps the biggest innovation was having the transformative agent being an airborne disease, because how do you defend against a micro-organism like that? Art!
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| "Dog Buns!" exclaimed Neville. "Not just vampires but Tripods, too!" |
The twist in the tale, if you like, is that by the end of the novel, and the film, Robert Neville, the titular LMOE, is now the monster in a new civilisation of cogent vampires. Actually they changed the character's name in the film, but we'll ignore that and pretend. The film came out in 1964, so a decade after Ol' Rick's opus.
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| Bloody chaos ensued*. |
DB came out in 2009, a horrifyingly long time ago, over 40 years after LMOE, and over 50 since IAL.
There was an intermediate stop along the way, "The Omega Man" of 1971 vintage, where the culprit was a topical conflict between the Sinister Union and The Populous Dictatorship, which rashly devolved into using biological warfare agents. Since germs recognise no political boundaries, the whole globe was affected. Art!
The producers were being clever here: "Omega" is the last letter of the Greek alphabet. So Colonel Neville here is, as in IAL/LMOE, the last uninfected Hom. Sap. or at least that we know of. Most victims of the Sino-Soviet plague asphyxiate and die, but a significant proportion survive with albinism and an inability to tolerate sunlight. No teeth, sadly. They do resemble a counter-culture, and retain their intellect, but deliberately avoid modern technology with religious fervour. Art!
Yes, they built a catapult. Torsion technology is acceptable, it seems
It's a jolly entertaining romp, just quite tangential to IAL.
Then we have 2007's offering of "I Am Legend". Yes, the Will Smith version. Conrad not a big fan. For one, it features a positive army of CGI zombies who are supposed to be the infected á la IAL yet who look exactly like CGI zombies. It has more in common with TOM than the source novel. Art!
"Hey, I bet you can eat a roast chicken whole!"
There is altogether too much talk of an "I Am Legend 2", which might really happen because the first one racked up $585 million on a $150 million budget. There are dark murmurings of it coming out in 2025, which will mean 70 years after the debut of Ol' Rick's opus.
Whilst we're talking about the Big Numbers, for "The Stand" with it's 99.4% mortality rate, which is quite modest compared to IAL and LMOE, and assuming a total global population of 8 billion, there ought to be 48 million survivors, and about 2 million of those in South Canada. At least to begin with ...
I told you, teeth with legs. Art!
Thank you AI
The Funny Money Has Become Runny
One of the reasons that Modern Day Mordor has been able to keep it's paralytic economy staggering along is the 'National Wealth Fund', which was a rainy-day hedge that Peter The Average had stocked up by skimming money from the budget, to the tune of $300 billion. Art!
What a little skimming can also achieve
The thing is, the Special Idiotic Operation was only supposed to last three days, and Putin fondly imagined that any sanctions would only last weeks or months at the outside. Not two years.
Consequently the NMF has been paying off the monthly deficit (of at least ₽1 trillion per month) and was used initially to prop up the ruble, as well as other money pits. This has not been particularly successful. Art!
The Ruffian Ministry of Finance and the Russian Central Bank don't like to publicise how much money remains in the NWF, and the last time Your Humble Scribe saw a total was in February of 2023, when it was down to $147 billion.
Well well André Morell, what's this Reuters put about on April 2nd? That the National Wealth Fund is down to $55 billion as of the beginning of April, as admitted/stated/confessed <delete where applicable> by the Ministry Of Finance.
Wow. In just over 2 years they've burned up $250 billion rubles, or $10 billion per month, meaning they'll be out of NWF cash by September.
What, pray tell, dear Muscovites, do you have to show for this expenditure? Art!
O yeah. That.
"City In The Sky'
The Doctor is about to rock people's conceptual world, as the mischievous time-travelling imp is wont to do.
More gloomy admissions, with a few puzzled faces about just what the
Doctor was leading to?
‘Your creation of the single-use Dart
spaceplanes was admirable, truly admirable. However, even if the Lithoi
disappeared it would take you decades to take your population Downstairs in
such craft.’
Emilia looked up at him, sharply.
‘We haven’t got decades. We haven’t got
years, even.’
The Doctor beamed, incongruously.
‘Quite! Nor could you return Downstairs
with the artefacts and knowledge it took so long to store and maintain.’
‘So it’s hopeless!’ came a sour comment.
‘We’re doomed.’
‘Not at all!’ carried on the Doctor, still
smiling. ‘We’re going to get you Downstairs by de-orbiting the entire
sphere.’
Standing with a bland smile,
the Doctor took careful note of the initial disbelief, silence and then
gradually increasing commotion about his show-stopping suggestion.
Ace looked at her mentor,
noting the smug grin he showed at having caused such a commotion. From experience she knew he’d allow the
confusion to carry on for a minute before stepping in to resolve it. Typical schemer!
‘What!’
‘Are you mad?’
‘From doomed to impossible.’
‘How on earth do you propose
to do that!’
At that last sentence the
Doctor’s head whipped round to face the speaker, Christos. He levelled his umbrella like a rifle.
From 'Can Doc?' to 'Can do!'
Points And Laughs
Bring on the dancing unicorns. Art!
The stock peaked at $79.38 on March 26th, and is now trading at $41.90, having lost almost half it's value. In just 10 days.
Bring on the buckets of popcorn!
You Can Never Go Back Because You Won't Be Able To Afford It
As we all know by now, Conrad's mind is like a skip full of mental rubbish, three miles high and a league each side.
Into this fermenting brain-broth floated up the title of a Young Adult's novel I read over forty years ago: "Over The Hills To Fabylon". As I recall, it was a prolonged skit on established fairy tales and fantasy stories.
"I wonder if it's still available - perhaps Abebooks can guide me?" I said to myself. Art!
Dog Buns! What did I tell you? Notice the rip-off P & P at £35, too, which is at least three times what it ought to be. It seems to have been published in a single edition in 1968. Your Humble Scribe may dig deeper. If I can be bothered.
Finally -
The normal smooth flow of things has been disturbed by Conrad's attendance at 'Crisis Point', put on by Richard as usual around Eastertime. This year it's being held in the Dungworth Village Hall. Yes, there's a joke in there if you dig deep enough.
ANYWAY yesteryon there was only a single new fresh blog, and that will very probably be the case today, unless I merely post the links as per Sunday and save this item until Monday. We'll see. I can be horrid like that.
* No swearing, every word true.
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